


half to death

by PunsAndRoses



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, First Meetings, Halloween, Meet-Cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:15:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25380730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PunsAndRoses/pseuds/PunsAndRoses
Summary: Like so many other of their group’s more catastrophic escapades, the haunted house had originally been Bow’s idea.  |  or, a fun lil' Halloween romp for all to enjoy.
Relationships: Adora & Catra (She-Ra), Adora/Catra (She-Ra)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 189





	half to death

**Author's Note:**

> So, probably goes without saying once you read this, but Adora and Catra didn't grow up together in this AU. So with that in mind, here's a little potential meet-cute to brighten your day.
> 
> Leave a comment if you had a good time! I'm super late to the beauty and majesty of spop but i love it and now i'm here to stay :D

Like so many other of their group’s more catastrophic escapades, the haunted house had originally been Bow’s idea.

“Come on! It’ll be fun,” he had cajoled them a few days before Halloween, his brown eyes wide and pleading, though Adora knew him long enough to recognize the spark of mischief buried in their depths.

He shoved a flyer in her face and she sputtered as she moved back to get a good look at the printed words. It was advertising a new horror theme park called The Fright Zone, the main attraction of which was a haunted house.

She glanced between the flyer and Bow’s puppy dog eyes, unamused. “The Fright Zone? That already sounds like it’s going to be a horrible idea.”

“Or!” Bow said, ever persistent as he folded the flyer and stowed it back into his bag, “it could be an excellent idea and a perfect way to unwind after midterms!”

“No,” she had said firmly. “After midterms the three of us need to hold another student council meeting for next semester’s activities. We don’t have time.”

“We’ll make the time! Glimmer, come on, tell her!” Bow had replied.

Her best friend had frowned and considered. “Actually all our midterms end by the 30th so we technically have the time,” Glimmer had said, her own face splitting into a mischievous grin as the idea took root in her head. “We can have the council meeting after Halloween and still have plenty of time to plan. I’m sure the others won't mind.”

It turns out, not only did the other student council members not mind, but they were more than on-board with the idea. Their other friends started taking up the idea throughout the week, and all of Adora’s protests were lost beneath the wave of boundless enthusiasm.

“Fine!” she had cried out in despair on the day before Halloween, throwing up her hands as they left campus after their last midterm. “We’ll go to the damned haunted house and I’ll probably die! Are you happy now?”

Cheers had greeted her answer.

\---

Adora regrets that answer now as they stand in line in The Fright Zone, and she shoves her fists into her pockets to hide the fact that they’re white-knuckled from fear. 

More so than not having time, Adora hadn’t wanted to come because she just _hadn’t wanted to come_. Haunted houses are…well, they’re haunted. Or they can be, and she’s had enough inexplicable and disconcerting encounters with the dearly departed inhabitants of her two-hundred-year-old foster home to know that it’s best to give the supernatural a wide, wide berth. 

Yet here she is, ready to stroll into a Halloween attraction designed to scare the pants off of her. She bites down on her lip and wishes her friends to the ninth circle of hell for dragging her along with them.

“Are you alright?” Perfuma asks her, peering at her face in concern. “You’re looking kind of pale, Adora.”

“Ha! Adora is always pale—it’s probably just the vampire make-up!” Behind her, Bow suddenly clasps her shoulder with a wide grin, and she has to fight not to yelp and flinch away from his jovial handling. It doesn’t help that Glimmer’s workmanship makes their friend look exactly like a decaying zombie. Suddenly, Bow’s normally friendly smile is suddenly a lot more threatening-looking, causing Adora to want to punch him from sheer defensive reflex.

Oh, God, they haven’t even bought the tickets yet and her nerves are already shot.

“I don’t know, you don’t look so good to me,” Perfuma continues, placing a hand against her forehead, “would you like to meditate with me before we go inside?”

Adora shakes her head, mostly to remove her friend’s hand. “No, and quit it Perfuma. I’m perfectly fine,” she lies.

“You don’t look fine,” Mermista says, shooting her a disbelieving look. When she showed up to their meeting place wearing her normal clothes, Bow, Glimmer, and Perfuma were already whining about her being a killjoy. At least, until she removed her scarf to reveal the horribly realistic makeup job she did to make it look like her throat had been slit wide open. Behind her Seahawk had come dressed as a pirate, which had surprised no one at all.

For the sake of her nerves, Adora avoids looking at Mermista for too long. “Of course I’m not scared. It’s a fake haunted house—a kitschy seasonal attraction where half the people who go are horny high schoolers looking for a dark corner and an excuse to grope each other.”

Ahead of their group, a gathering of said high school students turns around to shoot her nasty looks. So Mermista shoots them a sweet smile and the middle finger, which causes Perfuma to elbow her in the ribs disapprovingly.

Bow takes the opportunity to give her an assuring pat on the back. “Look, Adora, it’s gonna be fun, I promise. Just stick by me and Glimmer, and like you said, it’s all fake, what could possibly happen to you?”

\---

She gets lost, as it turns out. 

A bunch of arms reached out from hidden slots in the walls and began grabbing at them and their whole group scattered like so many headless chickens. 

In her attempts to track down Glimmer’s shrieks and Bow’s booming laughter she took a wrong turn somewhere and is now heading down an abandoned, dimly lit hallway. There are cobwebs in the corner and cracked mirrors on the wall, and frightening things littering the floor thats she doesn’t look too closely at, and the floorboards creak with—every—single—stupid—step.

If this is a war of nerves, Adora has already lost the battle, and she would quite like to wave a white flag to get herself out of here. She takes back the comment about this being a kitschy tourist attraction, as the decorations look far, far too real for her comfort level. For example, about halfway down the hall, she stops and stares in sudden horror at the ripped bits of wallpaper—looking like somebody scratched them off while they were getting dragged down the hallway… 

Or at least Adora hopes they weren’t real.

She takes five quick strides forward, heading towards the end of the hallway and the light she sees there as fast as she can, hoping a tad desperately that she isn’t in the section of the haunted house the purple-haired girl who’d handed them their tickets had referred to as the “extreme-scare route.”

“For the really adventurous,” she’d said, grinning a little too widely at them, her eyes looking slightly manic. .

Adora shakes her head, annoyed with herself. No, this is just ridiculous—she’ll simply find the nearest exit and leave. What was it the purple-haired girl had said? Follow the glowing arrows on the walls and you’d get out, no problem. So she makes her way to the end of the hallway, where there’s actually light to see by, and assumes she’ll find an arrow there.

She does. Except it’s double-headed—one points in the direction in which she came, and the other is pointing toward a new hallway that turns and leads down to a door, which is slightly ajar. There’s more light flickering there, and Adora decides that no, that’s probably not where she wants to head, she’s seen enough horror movies to know that _that_ way leads to danger, thank you very much—

Except when she turns around, an absolutely terrifying screech goes through the house, and all the lights go dead, leaving her to face a creepy hallway in pitch-black darkness, a hallway she’d only successfully traversed because there’d been some light to see by so she could avoid the jagged bits of wood and puddles of fake blood littering the floor.

“Fuck this,” Adora mutters. She swallows heavily and turns her back on the hallway and marches toward the door, ready to face her doom with as much dignity as she can muster. Which admittedly isn’t much, because her hands shake as she pushes on the door, and her heart’s pounding in her chest, and her breathing’s gone rapid and shallow.

When she enters the room, she’s prepared to have someone in a mask jump out at her the second she does so. 

Nothing happens. 

Instead, she finds herself in a library. She steps into the room, looking around suspiciously, but no, it simply appears to be a library, abandoned and with more dust and cobwebs than can be good for the books, but otherwise very normal-looking. There are even warmly lit lamps on little side-tables by very inviting-looking armchairs. She blinks incredulously at them, then shrugs, heading towards the door she sees across the room, with the faintly glowing arrow on it, as promised.

She stops abruptly as she walks past a shelf, then turns back and picks a book up.

“Woah,” she says aloud, looking down at the page it’s opened on, “it’s a signed copy of The House of Spirits. Bow’s dads would love thi—”

Cold hands wrap around her wrists, and Adora screams in sudden terror, flailing wildly against the solid body behind her. The thing hisses—hisses—and when she turns around, she sees a dark face whose mouth is open in a snarling rictus of rage, blood-red lips curved viciously around fangs as black claw-tipped hands reach out for her.

She doesn’t remember what happens after that, because everything goes black.

\---

“Hello? Are you alive now?”

Adora slowly opens her eyes, blinking up at the ceiling. She’s quite comfortable actually, and she shifts her body against what appears to be the well-cushioned armchairs that had looked so inviting earlier before she was attacked by—

She sits bolt upright, fear icing her veins as her body instantly goes into fight-or-flight mode. Her mind darting in several different directions all at once; part of her looking for the monster from earlier, the other part coming to the clear conclusion that she has already died, still another part cursing Bow ‘til the end of time for this dumb idea.

“Heh, you look funny when you’re panicked,” a soft, husky voice tells her, and gentle hands press her back into the chair from behind, and then a cup of steaming hot cocoa is presented to her. 

Adora looks up to find a girl around her age looking down at her, a brown forearm leaning casually along the top of the armchair. Only then does it dawn on her that this other girl is actually really pretty, half her face obscured by a cascade of beautiful, wavy, dark hair. The other half is startlingly beautiful, an imperious nose paired with a strong chin and smirking, red lips, with one golden-brown eye staring at her from beneath arching brows. The dark skin of her face is done up in intricate black patterns overlaying each other, making her look like some sort of mystical creature, perhaps a—

“Oh, no,” Adora says, closing her eyes in mortification. “That was you earlier, wasn’t it? With the—the—fangs, and the claws, and the—”

“And the scaring you so much you fainted?” she finishes for her, her lips curling up in a smile.

“I fainted?” Adora asks, pressing the heel of her hands to the sockets of her eyes. “Oh, God, I’m never going to live this down.”

The other girl’s smirk softens, looking almost endeared, “Well, that’s only if I decide to tell. I will probably.” she says, moving to the chair across from Adora’s and sitting down gracefully, arranging her purposefully tattered-looking skirts around her. 

Without the mass of hair covering the other half of her face, Adora could see that the girl’s other eye was a piercing blue, contrasting with the golden-brown one. The sight of them both entranced her a bit.

Observing her, it seems impossible that she could have ever mistaken her for a monster, but the evidence is on the table next to them: a set of fake fangs and elaborate claws for her fingers, which she begins to pick up and place on her hands. “I’m going to escort you out now,” she says, continuing, “We’ve got protocols in place if we ever get a deader on our hands.”

“Deader?” Adora asks.

The smirk is back now, those red lips curling up in a way that has Adora’s insides squirming pleasantly. “It’s the term we use for someone who wasn’t ready to handle the house,” she answers, “like you!”

“Oh,” she replies, feeling her face heat up. Adora looks back down at her mug of cocoa, thinking that it’s just her luck to faint in front of possibly the most beautiful girl she’s ever seen. “Sorry to take you away from your work,” she mutters.

“Don’t sweat it,” the other girl hurries to say, reaching over to pat Adora’s knee with a fully-clawed hand. “Getting our guests to faint is the best part. I’m good at my job,” she states proudly, shrugging a single shoulder.

“Yes, you are,” she agrees, chuckling humorlessly. “You even hissed at me.”

The other girl laughs this time, the sound dark and husky. “ _That_ was unintentional. I didn’t expect for you to try and hit me—you’ve got fast reflexes. Most of the time, people try to run away and not attack, and even if they do, I’m usually fast enough to dodge and do my whole routine”—and here she makes hands of her claws and waves them at her—“before they get the chance to land a hit. You caught me right in the solar plexus, though, hence the hissing.”

“Shit,” she says, standing up and going to her. “Shit, are you alright? I’m so sorry—I don’t know what I was thinking—this is a haunted house, what else was I expecting—God, how bad did I get you?”

The girl waves her off, casually dismissive. “Don’t worry princess, it wasn’t that bad. I didn’t even bruise. Once you fainted, you hit the floor pretty hard, and I might have banged your head moving you into the chair.”

“Ah,” Adora says, embarrassment overtaking her again. She lifts a hand and runs a few fingers through her hair, trying to feel for a bump. “Well…no, actually I feel fine. Nothing’s bruised except my pride,” she admits wryly.

The girl smirks at her again, it definitely looks fonder now. “Happens to everyone.”

She smiles tentatively down at her, feeling reassured by her casual treatment of the whole thing. “Uh—well, thank you for, uh, for taking care of me after I…passed out,” she finishes lamely.

Her smile widens, and it looks like she’s going to reply, but the walkie-talkie at her waist goes off. “Wildcat? You there, Catra? Group five’s missing a girl, could you maybe take a look-round—”

She picks the walkie-talkie up and tells the woman on the other end, “Scorpia, I told you to stop calling me Wildcat. And tell Group five to take a chill pill, I got her. She just fainted a bit. It was hilarious.”

Adora winces, but thinks that ‘fainted a bit’ was a step up from “fainting after screaming and nearly causing bodily harm.”

“Oh? Oh okay. Phew, great! Knew I could count on you, Wildcat--err sorry. Catra,” The woman on the other line replies. “Just bring her round. Her friends are getting kinda worried.”

“Yeah, yeah, tell them to call off the search party,” the girl—Catra—replies. She gets up and stretches a little, then crooks a finger towards her. “Come on princess, let’s get you back to your little friends.”

Adora follows obediently, sticking close to her, and is embarrassed again when Catra takes her hand to lead her through the dark hallways, her thumb rubbing reassuringly against her racing pulse. (Adora’s not embarrassed enough to let her go, however.)

\---

“Adora!" 

"Thank goodness!” 

Glimmer and Bow came rushing toward her the moment she exited, tackling her in a bear-hug. Adora could feel their respective halloween makeup rubbing off on both of her cheeks. “Oh my gosh we were so worried!” Bow exclaimed.

“I’m okay,” she says, trying to gently extricate herself before the pointy witch hat on Glimmer’s head poked her eye out.

She waves sheepishly at Mermista, Perfuma, and Seahawk who are all standing to the side smiling at her. “Sorry if you guys got worried!”

“What happened to you? One minute you were right behind me then the next you vanish!” Bow asks.

Adora sputters as she feels the wave of annoyance rise and ebb just as quickly. “You guys were the ones who left me!”

“So, so, so sorry again for you know, almost misplacing your friend,” a taller woman comes up to their group, her smile friendly and apologetic. She had short silver hair that was shaved on one side and black lipstick. “We could totally refund you guys if you want.”

Adora winces. “No, that won’t be necessary; I got what I paid for, after all.”

“Yay,” Catra says dryly, and everyone turns to look at her. Adora can see expressions of surprise and fascination on her friends’ faces, and feels a surge of embarrassment flare up when she realizes she’s still holding on to her hand. 

“Thank you so much,” Perfuma suddenly said, trying to diffuse the situation, “for bringing her back in one piece. Sorry if we caused you any trouble.”

Catra shakes her head, letting go of Adora’s hand only to clasp both of hers in front of her, the fake claws on her fingers clacking together as she did so. 

“I wouldn’t say she caused me trouble,” she says, trailing off vaguely. “Just…surprised me a little. But”—and here she turns to Adora and casually pulls her arm towards her—“if you have any complaints, feel free to call this number.” 

Catra scrawls something down on her arm in blood-red ink, then gives her a quick wink with her golden-brown eye. “I’m headed back inside Scorpia, tell me where you need me next. Sector eight sound good?”

“Ye-es,” the Scorpia says, her attention still on Adora’s arm. “That’ll be awesome. And do you guys need anything else, or…?”

“No, we’re fine,” Glimmer says firmly, already starting to herd everyone out of the room towards the parking lot just outside, and Adora joins them, waving one last time at Catra.

As the door of the haunted house closes behind them, Scorpia’s voice wafts out, “wasn’t that your number, Catra?”

Adora turns as red as the ink marking her arm, tugging her sleeve down over the number and studiously ignoring her friends’ suggestive sniggers and appreciative whistles, wondering how soon was too soon to call. 

\---

Years later, they’ll still tell the story of how they met, and as the others laugh, someone inevitably asks why on earth Catra even gave Adora her number.

She’ll shrug and simply say, “Can’t blame a girl for going after a someone who swoons at the sight of her.”

  
  
  
  
  


end.

  
  
  



End file.
